Tully: Teachers shouldn’t have to beg

Matthew Tully

We ask too much of our teachers. I think we can all agree on that obvious point.

Whatever your politics and whatever your views on education policy, it’s hard to dispute the notion that the job of being a classroom teacher is monumentally challenging. And that, as is often said, is in the best of circumstances. In far too many schools, the demands and obstacles facing the teachers who walk into the building every morning are downright ridiculous.

And then we make many of them beg for cleaning supplies. Or computers. Or even books. What in the world are we thinking?

After all these years of writing about education, I still argue that wonderful teachers can have tremendous and life-changing impacts on the children they teach. Great teachers can and every day do overcome the family and neighborhood dysfunction, and the cruel side-effects often attached to poverty, that bleed into so many classrooms. But the success that so many teachers have doesn’t come easy. It comes only with the type of grueling, non-stop work that makes you wonder how anyone can do it, and sustain it.

Yes, we ask too much of our teachers. But the role we expect them to play isn’t always matched by the support they are given.

The story of teachers reaching into their own wallets to purchase things that their students and classrooms need, but that their school districts won’t or can’t finance, is an old one. I’ve seen teachers run to Kmart at lunch to grab supplies needed for an afternoon class, and I’ve seen others dial for dollars, calling friends and acquaintances to raise money for student award programs and even clothes for kids who need them.

At the Statehouse, policymakers are locked in a nasty partisan debate over how to divvy up power on the state Board of Education. It’s a fight that won’t make life better for one student in Indiana. It’s a waste of time. What Indiana’s leaders should instead spend their time on is a quest to make sure the state’s teachers have what they need to lead successful classrooms.

There’s a website called DonorsChoose.org. I’ve written about it before — it’s essentially a wish list compiled by teachers, filled with basic items they want and need for their classrooms. You can search by city or school or type of class, and those who want to help can make contributions that help fund everything from iPads to hardback novels to markers.

Yes, markers.

Again, how have we gotten to a point where teachers have to beg for markers? Or to the point where teachers know what they need to lead a successful classroom but can’t get it? Or at a point when state leaders spend months on politically motivated education policy spats but too little time on the on-the-ground battles teachers wage every day?

DonorsChoose is a great website. And I hope many of you will visit it and help out. It’s filled with stories, written by teachers, that tell you how much daily effort so many of them put into helping their students.

But the website also tells a bigger story, a sad story, about what is going on in too many schools and too many classrooms. It lays bare that opportunity and experience gap between children in hard-hit districts and those in financially stronger communities that are mere miles away, but in reality worlds apart. A teacher at IPS School 67, Stephen Foster Elementary, for instance, writes of needing a laptop for his students because the school’s outdated computers are in short supply, and because few of the students have such technology at home.

“On the days we actually have our three computers,” the teacher wrote, “they run very slowly and often freeze while the students are using them.”

Teachers write of seeking supplies of novels, such as “The Other Wes Moore,” that they believe will engage and inspire their at-risk students, while others ask for contributions to cover things such as printer toner, headphones and musical instruments. One simply wants a supply of 20 dry erase markers so her class can participate in educational competitions at the white board — anything to get them excited to learn.

It’s flat-out wrong that teachers have to beg for these things. Fortunately, there are a lot of people out there eager to help. (You can also support Teachers’ Treasures, a wonderful local organization that provides classrooms with supplies.) So please help if you are inclined to do so.

But this isn’t only about contributions. It’s about something bigger: Our priorities as a state.

We ask a lot of our teachers. Too much. The least we can do is make sure they have what they know they need to teach and inspire the students who fill their classrooms every day.

Note: You can make financial contributions and find more information about the organizations mentioned in this column atwww.donorschoose.orgorwww.teacherstreasures.org. Teachers’ Treasures also accepts donations of new and “gently used” classroom supplies from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.​ Monday through Friday at 1800 East 10th St.